Earth
by Keeper of Tomes
Summary: 53 of the 100 Challenge. "Welcome, reader. Sit and be warmed by the cold indifference of death itself." A story in seven parts.
1. the deluge

**Title: **Earth  
**Author: **Keeper of Tomes  
**Song: **"Earth," by Second Person  
**Summary: **53 of the 100 Challenge. "Welcome, reader. Sit and be warmed by the cold indifference of death itself." A story in seven parts.  
**Words: **881 (current chapter only.)  
**Pairing(s): **TBA  
**Rating:** T for Teen.

I am a plot bunny w----. That is all. OH GODS IT IS A MULTICHAPTER. HAHAHAHAHA. (Don't worry. I'm working on Perennial Rose and BLuSH. Patience, young grasshoppers.)

First chapter, always short. Love it. LOVE IT. _Looooove iiiit. _

--

**:Earth**

_a story in seven parts, regarding, among other things:_

_six black crystals_

_a book of spells_

_one thousand blood-thirsty humans_

_a knight_

_an empress_

_and a good amount of dying._

_-_

_welcome, reader._

_sit and be warmed_

_by the cold indifference _

_of death itself._

_000_

In the Beginning, there was the darkness, and there was the light, and in between, nothing but the void and the beasts and the men.

And men and beast were one being, pulsating in its own great right. The beast stood on seven hills and the man was resting somewhere in the center, swaddled in great breasts of nature, drinking the white milk he paid for with sloth and misery.

Someone was going to die.

The ground was opening up like a coffin.

The men standing around the hole were no gardeners, and they planted no seeds.

-

She smells like guns and roses, the way he always imagined she would.

Hair is soft and shines wet as she steps from the rain of the Far Side onto the Condor, hands bound by crystal energy.

The water clings to her eyelashes and rolls down her cheeks with every blink, yet he knows that if the liquid were to roll into her mouth, she would not taste salt.

Only the empty, hollow flavor of rain at midnight.

Piper has jammed small crystals into the ground to guide Stork as he lands, a make-shift runway that casts an eerie red glow onto their faces. And she looks like a ghost. She looks like a beautiful, dangerous ghost who's out of souls to haunt.

One pale hand reaches forward and grabs the frame of the hangar bay door, steadying herself as she is led slowly into the black.

He watches Finn disappear with their prisoner and stands in the rain a little longer, letting his hair sag and feeling his stomach churn in its own emptiness; they have not eaten in days. And they have been here for weeks.

The ground is now rich and thick, spun like chocolate into a dark mixture of goo that climbs up his calves and rests in the hollows at the back of his knees. And he can smell the damp, that mind-boggling aroma of clean.

In the crimson light, he raises his hands to his eye level and notes, not without disdain, that they appear to be soaked in blood.

-

It is impossible to fly in such weather, much less open a portal to another world, so Piper has placed her crystals into a drawer in her desk and is now sitting on her bed, fingers folded softly in her lap.

She is the color of cinnamon after it has melted in intense heat, no longer that light and dusty color she bore as a child.

Sixteen and yet older than she has ever been able to imagine; she now knows that age does not mean how many years one has lived, but how many trials one has weathered.

When she entered this world, she was a girl.

It can now be said that she will exit as a woman.

Hands find her eyes and cup them. They _hurt_, and her vision is frustratingly blurry. There was an accident during a Binding, her sight is fuzzy… She does not wish to dwell, however, on her own physical fallbacks.

She waits patiently for someone to knock on the door and enter, waits for someone to encircle her body with arms, and yet, as usual, there is nothing but the swelling silence and the cold. The cold, which is embedded in the space where her ribs meat her torso, somewhere inside her, just below her heart.

When she breathes, something rattles in her chest cavity, and she knows that the butterflies in her stomach have died trying to escape.

-

The cage door is slammed shut.

Finn glares through the bars and watches her lean against the farthest wall, cringing away from the light like some pathetic cave creature bends from day.

He rattles the metal a few times, for good measure, then storms off towards his room, because his stomach will twist itself into knots if he stares at her for too long.

-

Junko and Radarr are both in Junko's room, and are both watching Aerrow as he drowns himself in the deluge.

Junko is silent and Radarr even more so; the Wallop strokes the top of the creature's head in an effort to calm himself, yet manages only to elicit a sharp nip on one of his fingers. This is not surprising, seeing as Junko's strokes were nearing the realm of "stifling pats."

There is a sigh. It fogs up the window and Junko lifts his hand to draw a sad face upon the glass.

"Now there are three glum faces," he notes, staring at his artwork.

His and Radarr's respective reflections stare back.

-

She is alone with the dark, and in the back of her mind, where logic meets imagination and they both say hello to premonition, she can hear the beast, and it is merging slowly, (softly,) with a permeable and corrupted visage of _man_.

And somewhere below it all, rumbling like an afterthought that should have been fore,

is the sweet stench of

death.

000

**A/N:** _Prequel to "Birds," which is still to come. Like, yay. This will be good. I promise. And I'll finish it, too. (Ha. I know. I can see you rolling your eyes right now. STOP. It.)_

_Review, please? I don't ask that much, so when I do ask it, it means I really want feedback. _

_Love you all._


	2. pison of havilah

**:pison of havilah**

- **or, six black crystals.**

_And a river went __out__ of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. _

-

**:piper**

When I was a child there was a grove of apple trees on terra, near my home, and I would go there on the hottest night of the year and catch all the fireflies that could fit in a jar at once.

I took them home and set them on my pillow and tried to read my old scrolls from their intermittent flashes of lime-green light.

I was never successful, of course.

When I was a child there was a field of high grass, where the sunflowers followed the sun's flight across the sky every summer day, and there I would go to catch lizards in my hands.

I took them home and tried to raise them like test subjects but they always disappeared out of their cage by the next day.

I'll never know if they died or just ran away, but either way, I failed.

I dissected rotten fruit just to watch the putrid juices flow over my countertops, and I ripped open the seed pods of every plant I could find, digging until my frail and girly nails could take it no longer. I stole knives from the kitchen and sliced up dead bugs to see what caused their demise.

And in all these ventures, I failed.

I grew older and turned to taking apart crystals, and here I excelled, because my organic cadavers have never lasted long enough, and I have never been able to dissect a person, never.

-

I think my drive in life is to figure out things. It is an animal curiosity but I'm no cat so I can't be killed.

The Master. I believe she's a monster.

She paces in her cage, fifty feet below my trembling body, and I can feel the metallic vibrations spinning into my head.

Monster, monster. I've never torn apart a monster, before. Does she have ancient runes inscribed on her bones, is there still evidence of her time when she was man's rib?

We've been told how it is she will die. They will take six crystals, each black like onyx, and they will be stabbed into her, all at once, before releasing their energy into her body, and she will die.

I'm terrible. I'm no hero.

I can't help but think of all this as an experiment, a grand experiment, and I want to be the scientist, but that's not my role.

I'm Piper, I'm sweet innocent Piper, and Aerrow said I was crystal mage, so I'm sitting down and sweetly, innocently going over the contraption that will do what I was never able to do.

Six crystals, one for her breast, one for her belly, one for each hand, one on each thigh. Filled each to the brim with killing magic, necromancy, and that's beyond my field of expertise. I never dabbled in the dark crystals that she wielded with such fluidity.

Obsidians, Oblivions, Overloaders. They fit in her palms. And soon they will stab those exact same hands, ripping the flesh and churning the bone.

It reminds me so ironically of a crucifixion, and no doubt, there will be someone who thinks of her as a martyr, but right now she's as good as dead. Her hands are already cold.

I'm sitting on the bed and I'm patiently waiting for someone to enter and hold me.

I want to be a child again, not the one who ripped the wings off of butterflies but the one who laughed and giggled and watched the sky scroll itself across the earth.

There are a million shadows, all cast by the rain, but the rain will stop, it always does.

Still no one knocks.

The charts are warm at my fingertips; I can smell their logic and their reason, sweet reason, innocent reason, all you ever did was give us the facts. I _adore_ everything that makes sense. Hence why I hate Finn, Junko's cooking, and _her. _

This is a deluge, a flood of biblical proportions.

They told us that God sent the waters to wash away all sin, so maybe that's why I feel like I'm drowning.

-

The rain finally stops and we take off. I'm on the balcony, casting the portal from my crystals, and Stork sends us through to reality.

The air is sweeter here.

Three hours from Atmosia and Aerrow is nowhere to be found. His skimmer is missing but Radarr's still here.

None of us blame him for leaving, save maybe Finn, who spouts nonsense about how Aerrow's just too cowardly to watch our nemesis die, but I don't think Finn truly wants to watch her gush blood from every orifice and slump over like a rag doll.

"Go check on the prisoner," I say, but he won't, so I have to go.

She has stopped pacing. Is seated on the stool we gave her so that she can either hang herself or sit down, whichever she feels is more comfortable.

Her hands are on her knees and she's breathing slowly and evenly, hardly in a manner befitting of a monster about to be drawn and quartered. Like a pig.

A pig.

She asks me what I want, but I want nothing.

I want nothing save to trace the length of her jaw with a knife and see if she bleeds black or red or nothing.

If I bite her lip, will she hurt?

And if I kiss her, will she burn?

I want to tell her I am always open to experimentation.

And I want to stab her. I hate her. I hate her lack of order, her unpredictability, her complete disarray of decorum and here I am, just scrambling for words to describe this indescribable _loathing._

Maybe I should just leave, but I don't.

"You deserve to die the way you're going to die."

"And which way is that?"

"Impaled. _Like a carcass._"

If I stroke her bare belly, would she tremble?

If I stab her breast, would she scream?

"Ha. Ha. Ha."

_If I kill her, will she weep?_

_ If I spare her, will she smile?_

-

I can rip the lock open, any moment, and set her free, but I don't.

I reach through the bars and snare her neck in my fingers and would you believe it, she has a pulse.

My fingers, spinning from my body, four fingers and a thumb, and they encompass her neck and that pulse, that pulse of sweet ore.

_If I kiss her, will she—_

"_BURN, _bitch."

-

_The name of the first is __Pison__: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold._

* * *

_**A/N:**_ _O_kay, I lied. Not prequel to Birds. I reworked the plot of both stories. (Xekstrin and Hermonthis, you two ladies have enough real life to worry about. I'm going to rewrite Birds again, (because I reread it last night and gagged,) and then just post it, as it is. No need to beta anymore. Still love you guys. :D)

The quotes are from the Bible. Did you get the bit with the apple trees, like Eve's temptation in Eden? And the lizards are supposed to represent Satan's serpent... Six crystals because six is supposedly the number of the Devil... SO MUCH MEANINGLESS SYMBOLISM.

By the way: no religion bashing. Not the time, not the place. XP

Dark Piper is delicious. No, no I'm not making this M. It's not THAT bad. This is about as horrific as it'll get.


	3. road to damascus

**A/N**: At the risk of wreaking upon myself the wrath of every Storm Hawks fangirl, ever... Here's the third chapter... Don't kill me. (cringe)

* * *

**:the road to damascus**

- **or, a book of spells**

_…but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything._

_-_

**:stork**

When you rub your eyes, extremely hard, there is that moment of pure whiteness, during which you can't see a thing. Other than the whiteness.

And that is what going through a portal looks like.

It's a suffocating white. It's an emptiness. It's what death must look like.

It took us six hours to get to the Far Side, yet only seconds to get back through to Atmos, but I'm not so surprised. Time screws you up in all these weird ways you just stop questioning it eventually.

All this time, I have been craving life, craving the pulse that slides so easily from within us to fade. And every word and every action I am responsible for is one more futile pin to keep the living in place.

It is easy to be a hero. Being the coward, over and over, letting everyone down, but knowing you're going to die, you're going to the Big Empty, the blank whiteness, no matter what, it is more than enough motivation to elude, to hide, to run, and so I ran.

I ran for years until finally this group of children, this band of dysfunctional siblings, stopped me, and now I'm standing at the helm of the world's most beautiful ship, breathing in Atmosian air, and yet I'm still being chased.

She's in the hull. She's in the hull and she's death, but she's also alive.

And she's following me, wherever I go.

-

She had several items on her when we caught her on the cliffs of the Far Side. Her staff, her cloak, the Binding crystals, and a book.

The things she grabbed on her way out of a crumbling palace.

The things are in the safe, the safe is in a closet, and the closet is in my room.

It isn't often when I just _have _to look through something, but today… Today I want to know what's in that book, and my fingers are itching. Ever since I took it from her limp, incapacitated hands and placed it in the box, I've been wondering what she would need a book for. What she wrote in it. What she _learned _from it. Is it the source of her power, I wonder.

It's a control issue.

So I dial the combination and I take the small volume from the steel jaws of my little box. It's new, shiny, slick, definitely no heirloom that has been handed down through generations of witches and overlords. It is _hers_, and hers alone, of her making, of her keeping, of her use.

I should give it to Piper.

But I don't.

I open it. I hate myself and I open it despite this loathing of my organic, biological curiosity, this desire.

The witch's book of spells is open before my very eyes, and in it are all her concoctions of crystals she has used to unleash mass destruction upon Atmos.

The Storm Engine. The Enhancer Crystals. And her portal to the Far Side, the charts she used to find it, the key she used to unlock it, everything, it's here, on paper, in her flawless handwriting, and the letters are arranging themselves like they're dancing.

This is death's delightful handbook.

My breath has disappeared.

I slam the thing shut and throw it into the safe and then I close the door. I feel a little like Pandora, but with one exception: I shut that lid in time.

-

It's haunting me, that book, itching at my insides. It's settled languidly on my heart but I don't want to scratch it.

I'm afraid of what might come leaking out.

I so want to run, the way Aerrow has, just jump on a ride and never look back. But how can I leave my home? And these people, I owe them something, we are a team, but all I want, all I want, is to no longer be brave, because I can't take this responsibility, this weight, any longer.

And you can call me selfish but it won't matter.

I can still remember how those pages felt beneath my fingers, that soft smoothness of thin paper, and me, smearing the graphite with my sweaty hands, as I turned through it, absorbing her darkness…

That book. I should burn it.

Just take it to the engine room and _burn it_ in the incinerator.

I would adore watching it spiral up into smoke.

Yes. Burn. Fire will cleanse it.

I slam down the autopilot button and sprint to my room, retrieving the volume from the safe and biting my lip to keep from opening it; why do I so want to open it?

I'm not like her; I'm not a killer.

Somehow, without my brain realizing it, I'm now standing before the yawning jaws of the incinerator, and the flames are licking the burnished metal, and I'm ready to throw this little book inside, but I… I…

The hot coals, the delightful fire, which will rid the world of her evil, this final piece of her that needs to be destroyed, it's up to me, me, me, always up to me, I killed Repton, I liberated Bogaton, I flew my ship into a parallel dimension, I can toss a book into a fire.

I don't want to run anymore.

But three rooms over, in a cage, she's there, and I cannot hide.

She's scrutinizing me through the walls, and she's daring me, she's cajoling me…

_Stork, keep it. What's the hurt, Stork? What's the rush?_

No, no, no…

_We're alike, you and I, neither of us truly human, truly accepted, understood… _

What? Alike? I'm not you, I will never be you…

_But I understand you. You're out of breath from running, but it'll end if you just stand still and pocket that little notebook._

Will it?

_Be brave and do the wrong thing for once._

That makes… That makes no sense…

_Hahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa…a…._

Oh god Oh god Oh god… No, no, no, no…

My hand is sliding the book into my pocket and I'm turning from the fire and the sweat on my forehead has dried and now?

Now I'm in front of her cage.

-

"What do you want from me?"

She smiles at my question. Perpetually knowing something I will never know.

"I see you've got something there. In your hand. Looks familiar. Wouldn't be mine, by any chance, would it?"

"N… no."

"You're a very bad liar, Stork."

"I…"

"Can I please have my book back? It means a lot to me. Sentimental, you understand."

"No!"

"Stork, it's not going to help me in any way. I've no crystals, no weapons… I'm not a magician. I can't simply fabricate something from nothing.

"Only god can do something as meaningless as _that_."

She laughs. I despise her laugh. It cuts more than any weapon. I want to turn around and walk away, but something tells me I should remain and listen.

"You didn't _read _my book, did you? Well, of course you did, otherwise you wouldn't be blithering as you are… So you see how I can make no use of it. I would simply like my property to be returned."

"I can't… Can't do that…. It's a part of you, if it survives, a part of _you _survives… Can't have that happen. It's not right."

_Pandora… Pandora closed the box, didn't she?_

"It is like denying me a priest or Last Rites; it simply isn't done by those who believe in the true power of justice."

"You don't deserve my justice."

She chuckles lightly, saying, "You amuse me, Stork." Then holds out her pale hand, her pale and scarred hand, soon to be run through by crystals, so what's the harm in—

"_Never!_"

And I'm running up the stairs. With the book. In my hands.

But I don't feel like I've won anything.

-

"Piper, there's something I need to show you."

"Not now, Stork." She's bent over papers, all sorts of papers, I don't recognize a single one, they look like blueprints for some contraption…

"It's important. It's very important."

"Stork, wait until after I'm done here."

"Piper, if you don't let me show you, bad things will happen."

"Stork! I don't need your paranoia! Not now! Besides, I thought you were over all that 'doom' crap." And she pushes me out into the hallway. Then closes the doors behind me and… Well, I guess goes back to her "important business."

Yeah. My doom crap. I'm totally over it.

I go back to my room and set the book down on my bed. I'm waiting for it to explode or something and save me the trouble of having to go back to that incinerator and actually burn it.

_Pandora closed the box in time._

No. No she didn't. She let all the evil out.

I've opened the bloody book. I know everything that's in it. I just do. The matrices, the instructions, the intricate designs, embedded on the gray flesh of my brain, burrowing inside, the greatest disease of _knowing_, and this… this is what it must be like, to stand on that brink, between good and evil, this knowledge…

And I know what has been holding me back.

I can't just destroy the book.

She's in me, do you understand? I read it and now a part of her has burrowed under my skin. She's _there_. And we have to kill all of her, every last inch and millimeter, every last thought. Idea. Notion.

I'm a bit of her, now.

I must go.

-

I don't want to jump into the Wastelands, and who's going to pilot the ship when I'm gone?

But after she dies, there will no longer be a need for me. For the Condor. For the Storm Hawks.

So I might as well save Atmos the trouble of mailing me a pension and just die.

But first things first.

Burn that damn book.

The sweat on my brow has reemerged, thick and soupy. And the incinerator is hungry. So I feed it. I fling the book inside and I swear I hear something scream as it dies, a grand death rattle, oh I'm so pleased with myself. I laugh, laugh, laugh. All this delightful laughter; I want to cry, too.

Maybe I should write a will. But there's nothing worth leaving behind.

Piper can have everything; how's that?

-

There is wind, sweet Atmosian wind.

Of course I don't want to die, you only want to die if you're crazy in the head. I'm hungry, though, hungry for the darkness, or the light; either way, it's going to be empty and cold. There's nothing warm about departing.

I jump, over the balcony, feet grazing the Condor's metal hull, and this is it, all the charts and the letters, rearranging themselves in my head to form the meanings, if I wanted to, I could have ruled the world and killed the world, but killing me, it's enough, isn't it?

It's all the control I'll ever need, all the control I'll ever have.

I do believe I'm done with running.

Ha. Ha, ha.

Who's laughing now, Master?

_Pandora closed the box in time; she locked in hope. _

_ Hope remained._

Aahhh…

I'm breathing in the emptiness and it tastes—

-

_And suddenly a light from heaven shone about him._

* * *

_  
_

_A/N: _Hoo-kay... Hee... Hee? Have mercy.


	4. the bricks of babel

Sorry this is late; I had horse-riding stuff, had to go home early because of an H1-N1 (porcine flu) scare, but I'm good. I'm not sick. WHEW. Because you'd all be sad if I left, right? ...Right?

.... RIGHT?!

Anyways. Chapter four. Short. But the fact that it's Finn? Oh, that should make up for it TONS-AH.

* * *

**:the bricks of babel**

- **or, one thousand blood-thirsty humans**

_Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there… Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."_

_-_

**:finn**

We should have realized by now that the city we built, we built to watch it burn. And it was euphoric, it was amazing, it was us running around a bonfire getting drunk all the while, tossing bottles into the blaze and watching red, blue, white, and orange converge against an ink black sky.

But morning always comes and you have a hangover and there's just smoke. Smoke and ashes.

Please, though, if you're a friend of my sanity, don't mention the ashes, never again. They remind me of phoenixes and _hope_, don't you see?

It's the smoke I linger on; ashes you can revive, ghosts, you can't. And I, for one, don't wish to relive the hell that was a dying objective of perfection.

I have nothing left save the idea that it was all worth it, because right now, just beneath my feet, rumbling in the dark bay of this ship of ours, (and I apologize, because I don't usually go for the poetic,) is the enemy, and she's going to die. I think that's enough for me, right now. It will have to do.

-

Sorry if I sound different, sorry if I'm acting strange.

Of course, I don't need to apologize. Fuck it, I owe you, The World, absolutely nothing. It's you who owes me two years wasted and all the youth I sacrificed for a damn cause. Save me from the rhetoric. Bonfires aside, I want you to go to hell.

I won't be satisfied, never. If this war ever gave me anything, it's hunger, for love and flesh and death of those who dealt death. What did I ever promise you? Nothing. But you, you promised me glory and—

"Finn? Are you talking to yourself again?"

Piper stands in the doorway and glares at me.

"No."

"Then who _were_ you talking to?"

"The World."

"If I didn't know you better, I'd say you'd been drinking." She purses her lips and backs away a little. "I came to tell you Stork's dead."

"Huh?" I sit up a little more and grab the sheets of my bed. "Stork's what?"

"He threw himself over the railing." She sounds cold. Indifferent. "Aside from needing a new pilot, though, we should be good."

"Piper, are you alright?"

She had turned to leave, is now giving me a wary look over one slim, dark shoulder. "Me? Oh, yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"

"…Stork just _died_, and you're just… It's like you just lost a toy or… Piper!"

She's gone. Not coming back. Hopefully, she's crying. Hopefully, she's becoming human again.

I'm a little shocked and suddenly it's become cold. Stork's dead. Okay.

Deep breaths, Finn.

Stork's dead. _Shit._

Aerrow, you bastard, come back. I don't care where you are and what you're doing; as long as you can still breathe, get on that blasted skimmer of yours and come _home_. We need you _here_.

Stork's dead.

-

We land on Atmosia and hand her over; I lost the rock, paper, scissors tournament, so I get the honor of "escorting" our "guest" to the prison. Neither of us say a word to each other until I slam the barred door shut and turn to go.

"Hey. Blondie."

I grunt as a response.

"Sorry about that pilot of yours."

"Ch. You're not sorry at all." I glare at her. "If you had anything at _all _to do with it, I swear—"

"Oh, but my impressions stated that you didn't care much for that paranoid Merb." She grins, satisfied. "Or did you? Just realizing it now, aren't you? _His _life flashing before _your _eyes."

"Shut up and let me leave."

"I'm not making you stay. You _want _to stay here, talk to me, find justification. I'm dying tomorrow anyways, so what's the point? I might as well enjoy my last day on this earth."

I pause. I search for a response, tongue flailing inside my mouth. Why does she have to do this, she's flinging the ashes right in my face, and I hate her so much right now.

I guess the best thing to do is leave, so I do, but she wins anyway, because I can hear her laughing. She got to me.

She got to all of us.

-

Piper is the only one awake when I get back. The ship is empty and hollow.

She greets me with a mug of what smells like coffee but tastes like hot dishwater; only thing she couldn't make, and that's coffee.

"Aerrow's back," she whispers; "He's asleep."

"Did he say why he left?"

"Uhm…"

"Sure, whatever."

I've loved her for a while. Correction: I've _realized _I love her for a while. It's a little more than sister and little less than _kiss me_, somewhere in between, where when she grins at me I'm pretty much satisfied. I still worry about here, though, worry about the detachedness she displayed, when Stork died, and now, this broken up transmission about Aerrow...

"Was…. Did she talk…?" Piper looks at me, worried.

"I don't want to discuss it. Good night, then."

And I effectively silence us both, because silence is absolutely golden right now, and I wish to be rich.

They built Babel, because they wanted to come together, to spite their god, and to show him what it was they could do without him. And the language, the words, they where the unifying factor; take that away, it all falls apart. Just like the tower, the symbol of uselessness.

She understands, as she always does, and turns off the kitchen lights, bathes me in the dark, and I miss her already, listening to her leave.

She often says now that I've grown up, no messing around, and that was all along. Even during the final battle for Atmosia I was a kid, I was young, but something in the Far Side, something about the fact that we all sort of _died _a bit there—

That got to me.

I wasted…

We wasted…

And now I am wasting my breath on you, the pitiless World.

-

Morning of her execution, I'm thinking about the blood.

Throw up, only nearly. End up bent over the toilet, waiting for my breakfast to resurface, but it doesn't happen.

Aerrow's not talking to me.

My mind is disintegrating.

I tell him I missed him when he was gone, and man, don't run off.

I was pissed at first.

Guess no more, we're all together—

And then he says, "I'm only back to watch her die."

Pause.

"Then I leave."

Licks his lips and glares at me.

"Okay, then."

Junko and Radarr both don't want to go.

Aerrow makes them.

It's needlessly cruel.

Piper doesn't protest.

Where did she go, the girl, the child—

No trial. No trial. Justice is death, and we all relish the sentence, it bends in our mouths.

It's going to happen; I don't believe it.

-

One thousand men and women stand around a platform.

Screaming for blood.

This is _you_.

The World.

All here.

Babel, dead and burned.

The words, falling apart.

ThoughtsrunningtogetherandIcannotescape.

She looks at all of us, all of us, looks at us, violet eyes, she's ready to die.

My eyes. Close.

Shut out everything.

Can't close my ears.

Still hear your roar for blood.

_I want to be young again._

_ When this is all over, I'm putting ashes on her grave._

_ To remind her of what she did. _

_ To—_

All of us.

-

Coherency:

Babel was meant to be perfect; look where it got us, got you.

-

_Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth._

* * *

**A/N: **I consistently forget to mention that the quotes are from the King James and International Version of the Christian Bible, and are taken from varying chapters of the Book of Genesis. Again, as mentioned in a previous chapter, I would appreciate it if you kept opinions regarding religion to yourself. I'm not trying to convert nobody, here. The quotes are there for effect. :D

Anyways, new update soon, I'm ON A ROLL HERE. I LOVE YOU ALL GUYZ BYE.


	5. goliath has fallen

**:goliath has fallen**

** -or, a knight.**

_You armed me with strength for battle; you made my adversaries bow at my feet. You made my enemies turn their backs in flight, and I destroyed my foes. They cried for help, but there was no one to save them— to the Lord, but he did not answer._

-  
**:junko**

I don't pretend to know why Aerrow left or Stork jumped or why Piper doesn't care or Finn is angry. But it doesn't matter, these things _are_, just like I'm me and the sky's blue. It's real, so I won't try to understand too deep.

No one's asked me or Radarr what we think about all this. Seems like we've been forgotten. This isn't really about me, though. It's more about them. They all complain they've changed because of this war. I don't know why they say that. They were like that all along. It's just… war brought it out of them. They lost stuff. They didn't change, they lost and then they got other stuff that was worse.

Piper just isn't as "compassionate" anymore—that's what Aerrow says. But he's not so brave, he just left, only comes back to say goodbye, and that's only because he's guilty. Finn never jokes with me anymore, is serious, always says there's no point, never was a point. And Stork—it all got to him, I guess.  
But me and Radarr, we both sit here, and we're the background. And that's okay. I don't complain. We never complain. We smile. We grin and we bear it.

-

I send her food, the night before she's supposed to go and get executed. I feel a little sorry for her, but I also hate her. Pity and hate; they're not supposed to go together, aren't they?

She doesn't say a word to me. Not a word.

I'm not worth her breath.

Just takes the tray and glares at me.

-

I'm tired, a little tired, of being pushed around. I don't want to go watch her die, but Aerrow says we've gotta go, it's our duty. But the war's over, so we don't really have to do _anything_. And he should talk.

But I don't complain, I never complain.

-

It's a short walk to the clearing where they're going to kill her. There are so many people, from all those terras, and I can't understand why it is they want to watch someone die so badly. I don't know what pleasure they're going to get from it. Is watching her die going to bring back what she took from them?

Piper once told me that this war was like David battling Goliath. And now I wonder what happened to David, after he won. Did he become king? If he became king, I feel sorry for him. I can't understand how someone can live with so much responsibility.

Aerrow, he's a knight—he might understand. He killed all his enemies, and he's watching the last one go today, and now what? He's watched them beg and plead and cry and scream. It's done. So now what, he gets to be king?

I don't see the sense there. You kill and then you are rewarded, but only in war--

They're leading her up to the platform. There's this crazy box up there with black crystals sticking out of a few points, and they're tying her to it. I can't watch, can't watch, can't, can't, cant…

-

There isn't any sense to what we're doing.

-

I can't sleep. I closed my eyes and didn't watch her die, but I heard it, I heard screams and confusion, and then someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned and opened my eyes and saw Piper, and she was staring blankly at me. "It's over," she said. "She's gone."

We went home. Now I'm in bed.

No one tells me what really happened; I don't want to know. I feel so sorry for her now, no more hate, just sympathy. Why did we feel so much anger around her? Because she was evil? But maybe to her, _we _were evil. If she did the same to us, we would feel so terrible.

What have we done. What did we do.

In all the fairytales, the knight kills the dragon and rides off with the princess and everything is fine, but what happens if the princess can't smile and the knight is a coward and the dragon… the dragon was not so horrible?

Real life isn't so pretty. I prefer the stories, but I can't live inside my head, not anymore. We've… We've killed Goliath; that's enough for now. I can stop and breathe a little.

Finn tells me over and over we've won, but I don't think what I feel now is winning at all. If anything, we have lost.

-

They bury her on a hill. I go visit. All by myself.

Everyone tried to keep me from going, but I was a little tired of being ordered around all the time, and never given a choice anymore of what to think... So here I am, all alone, unless you count her.

I want to tell her I'm sorry she had to die, and that life was just that mean to her, but she did some bad things, and so this was justice. I want to tell her how I couldn't watch her die, but I did hear it, and it sounded painful and disgusting. I try to tell her that I hope she loved someone or someone loved her, because that makes things better a lot of the time, being loved. Yet something in my head says that she just didn't know what love... is.

I don't say anything, though, not even goodbye. She's gone. Goodbyes don't matter anymore.

Oh...

Goliath is dead, but she wasn't Goliath. We were.

-  
_I have wounded them that they were not able to rise: they are fallen under my feet._


	6. the tempting of adam

**:the tempting of adam**

**-or, an empress**

…_the Lord formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being._

-

**:aerrow  
**  
I've made an effort, don't you see? I've tried making her something disgusting, changing her image to a vile and alien creature, but she's so _goddamn beautiful _that contorting her is impossible for me. Thin and pale and she glows under dim light, translucent almost, and when I touch her I can smell it, the blood, the war, the conquest, and the power. My fingers look as though they would fit perfectly in the grooves of her ribs, or between the bumps of her spine. Keys of an organ, beads of a rosary.

Her anatomy must be just like that of us people. And I can see it, these frail bumps of bone beneath thin skin behind her ears, the rise and fall of her neck and breasts and belly. Everything angular but rounded.

This world is a cheap imitation of perfection—somewhere else, I've been told, mostly by Piper, is where all the lines are one-eighty and the circles are three-sixty and if you breathe all you get are equations. And that's where I can understand her, speak with her, without feeling as if I'm committing high treason.

Has she no soul? She torments me and I'm burning. This is what Hell must be like.

-

She glows when I go down to see her, an hour after I placed her inside the cage in the first place. Looks at me with pools of liquid poison and smiles.

"I've been expecting you," she whispers. Soft but it carries, all the way across the room. "_Aerrow_."

How is it she can make my name elicit sensations of a hand crawling slowly down up my back and to my neck and my face and lips and--

Strike me dead, just do it now, and save her the trouble.

What would she taste like, there's no harm in trying, just the smallest of kisses, and neither of us have any experience, so what would it matter? She's glaring at me like she wants it.

She knows, I know, "Why?" seems like a plausible question, and so I ask it.

"Because I can, Aerrow."

Somehow I end up just outside the door, and her sickly fingers are tangled in my hair, and how _did I end up here_, when did this happen? Was it that remorseless, sociopathic look of triumph upon her face as she blew up her world and everyone in it? Or even earlier, as she floated into my very imagination? Desire to defeat her my ass. I wanted more. I still do. And I don't understand why. I'm good. She's the enemy. I hate her, I hate her so much, because her fingers are all the way down to my neck and her lips hover right in front of mine, and _oh my god I cannot breathe._

Wretched, wretched snake. Poisonous.

Flicks her body forward so that her mouth sinks over mine, all cold skin and hot air from a warm human body. She looks like a human, all physical signs indicate it. But she kisses like a demon and smells like War and feels… She's chaos embodied.

Pulls away and breaths on me, grinning.

"Well? Was it what you wanted? Did I answer your question?"

"_Hate you_."

"You've an odd way of showing your so-called 'hate'."

Something silent and cold in her gaze is drifting over me and settling, ash after the eruption. And I can tell, right now I can smell it.

"What is it you want?" I can't help but say it placidly. I wanted to hiss it, snarl it, growl it, anything but whisper or murmur or… something idiotically quiet.

She lets go of my hair. And now that the feel of her skin on mine is gone, I almost miss it. And then she looks away, almost demure-like, even though I know it's not in her nature to be shy and reclusive.

"I want you to kill me."

"What?"

"Before the execution. I want you to stab me and make it quick and painless. As a favor." She runs one pale finger down the side of my cheek, raising hell and goose-bumps as she does so. "For _this_."  
What am I supposed to say. No longer a question, but a revolving thought curled around my brain and against the hard but permeable bone of my skull.

Gunpowder and dead roses. That's what she smells like, tastes like, sweet but bitter and deliciously dark--

No, no, no, this is all wrong, all wrong, and my head is going to explode with the pressure. I can't do this. But I can't run away either. And before I know it, her dry lips are on mine again, and this time it's fiercer, and she's pouring a bit of herself into it, her soul, (which was not supposed to even exist, dammit,) seeping through my teeth and into my throat.

I gag and pull away, suddenly disgusted with her. Or myself. I don't know, I can't even tell the difference.

"_Well_?" Her voice is husky and low.

"I… will have to think about it."

"Coming from you," she says, smiling seductively, all poisonous and tender and enveloping—"… That's as good as yes."

I turn away and I run.

-

"Uhngh."

"Sorry, what?"

"Nothing, nothing. Uhm, Piper?"

"Yes."

"Piper."

"That's me. What do you want, Aerrow?"

"I think I'm going to be a little busy for the next hour. Or so. So don't come looking for me. Okay?"

"…okay."

"That's it? No questions?"

"It's not my place to care."

"..."

"Hello?"

"Right then. I'm getting off the intercom now. Uh, bye."

"Goodb—"

-

I dare not approach her this time. I don't know if I can trust myself.

But would my hands not fit perfectly in the grooves of her ribs, or between the bumps of her spine, keys of an organ, beads of a rosary, falsely holy, truly sin?

How can lust be _sin_, though? It's so natural, so difficult, dare I say impossible, to suppress. It rises and falls and envelops. It's divine temptation, more succulent than fruit from the forbidden tree.

I do not understand the connotation of apples and romance. Roses, however—

"Have you returned with an answer?"

How can I possible speak with her, a monster? And where, where the hell did she learn human speech? Snakes should not be able to talk, but she is hardly a woman. I cannot imagine her resting against my heart in the form of white bone, a rib. Woman did not come from man, man springs from, is bound to, and will die because of, woman.

"I can do more, you know. More than just—Well, I'm sure you understand."

I do, and I feel sick at the thought of what I want most. _Her_, pale and empty of clothing and dignity, smiling and crawling towards me and, well, I can't. She's so hollow and un_real_. Is this what the first woman was like, all ethereal and smoky, so beautiful and delightful and new that man could not comprehend her altogether, so entranced with her was he? No wonder she tempted him to join her _so _easily.

Took the fruit from the Tree of (dire, deadly, disastrous) Knowledge, and fed it to the one she… she…

I don't know; did Eve ever really love Adam? I don't think so, I doubt it entirely. Who loved him was Lilith, who was his equal in every way, but she became so cold and _indifferent _that her punishment was separation.

_Piper I thought I loved you but--  
_

"I'll do it."

And her reaction does not exist, not on her face, anyways. But it does linger somewhere deeper, because she lets out a small "Ahph" noise, then leans back and fades into the shadow.

I've pinned it down: she tastes… tastes…

I'm back in front of the cage and I'm reaching out to find her neck. Grab her collar and pull her up to me, can feel her heartbeat thumping low like a war-drum. She's closed her eyes tight, perhaps so that she will not memorize the look on my face when I force her, but I, I am not evil.

I will never find her lips again, never. I am remembering the night we loaded her onto the ship as though she were cargo, and how the rain saturated her mouth and made it swollen, and _that_ is her filling, her core: she is filled with nothingness, the empty sensation of rainwater in your belly.

Fleeting, fleeting desire.

I _will _kill her, but not for the reason she must believe. I do not love her, merely desire her, and desire disappears, as all base and mundane things must. I will kill her because Eve was granted mercy in the end, and no one deserves to be butchered, and because I hate her, so therefore, I must end her. It's justification, it's a terrible self-contradictory spiral.  
I can barely believe it myself.

Somehow I'm now at the hangar bay and look, my skimmer, primed and ready to go, and the great Atmosian sky around me, so I jump on and a take off, that horrible promise I made biting at the back of my neck, searing like her breath down my throat.

-

I do not return for a while.

By the time I get back, they have reached Atmosia, and I join them there, to learn that Stork is dead and _she _has been moved to the prison.  
Piper greets me with a feeble "hello," then wraps her arms around my neck for a brief while, long enough for me to sense her warmth and despair, all at once. What has she become. I trace my fingers up her back and to her shoulders--

"Goodnight." She pulls away. Amber eyes dance up and down my person. "You look tired," she observes, then turns around.

"Right."

"Uh-huh."

-

"I don't _want _to go, though."

Junko shoots me a mournful stare.

"You must. And that's an order. This is our final battle."

What I don't tell him is that I must not suffer this without them all beside me, and that they must all feel disgusted and wretched and _feral_, and that _this _is what we fought for, all along.

The clearing has been trampled down by the thousands of men and women and _children _gathered to watch her bleed. And she will bleed. She will die. The contraption is set up and ready to be used, six black crystals searing into the sky, pulsating with black energy.

She is led upon the platform, standing straight and tall, an empress until the very end, and her kingdom is my mind. Brain on fire, hands sweating, I pull a blade from its sheath. Junko has closed his eyes and looked away; very well, then, he'll be spared our nightmares--

Tied up to the machine, and ready to be impaled. Her eyes find mine. I am forcing my way through the bubbling sea of vengeance seekers, and I'm mounting the platform; Finn roars something cold and abrasive at me, but I don't listen. Piper sways, arms around herself, empty look upon her face; Junko is mumbling nothing to no one, is turning away, close to weeping, Radarr, nowhere to be found, Stork, _dead_, and me, stabbing her at the heart, other hand cupped about her waist.

Fingers fitting perfectly in the grooves of her ribs, between the bumps of her spine, pressing keys of an organ, stroking beads of a rosary.  
Her death rattle combs the bend of my ear.

"_Thhhhh—"  
_

And away she goes.

-

That night I leave. I fly away from the Condor and the disappointing stain on the platform, escaping screams of how I am a hero, a savior, I did the right thing, I killed her, fair and square, almost as though it were a battle; disregard that she was tied down and weak.

So thin and lithe and pale, so beautiful, so young, just like us.

I can see her now, walking away from that Tree, something in her hand, bringing it to me, "Come, dear, I've something to show you, and it's _wonderful._"

Hitched breath.

"Nggghaaa… Yes, _Lark_, it _is _wonderful."

-

_Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living._

* * *

_**A/N: **Uhm, yeah, still sorta short, but I put a lot into this chapter. Whew. Got a bit smoky there, didn't it? ;D_

_(Lilith, in case you didn't know, was the first wife of Adam. It doesn't say so in the Bible, but the Dead Sea Scrolls mentioned it, and she's fairly well known as being a demon, so... Ho-hum. She was created from dust, as Adam was, so that made them equals, basically. She and Adam didn't "click," per se, so a new wife was created for the first man, and that was: Eve. Ta-da!)_


	7. the view from the mountain

**:the view from the mountain  
-or, a good amount of dying**

_I said I would scatter them, and blot out their memory from mankind._

_-_

**:cyclonis**

In five minutes, I will die.

I'm not _trying _to be dramatic. Really, I'm not. It's human nature to make a larger-than-life deal of The End.

Larger-than-life. Hah. That's funny.

-

I'll say this much for the Sky Knight: He's a terrible kisser. But the taste of him wouldn't go away, won't, can't. I'll carry it to my grave. He reeks of regret, it oozes from every pore on his skin.

I want him to kill me. It's important he do it. Poetic pride, I suppose.

You know what else is poetry? Me force feeding him the apple, and him love-hating every minute of it.

-

Four minutes. The guard outside my cage is getting fidgety.

Can you blame me for wanting to weep? Or smile?

Piper. Her face in front of my eyes and her breath on my skin. I only wanted her the way I'd want a new crystal. A new terra. An acquisition, a prize. But the thing was, she burned a little differently than the others.

Sparked.

Hm.

-

I've only secrets. I will never be a book one can open and peruse. I am a tome, locked tight and hidden.

And I'll have you know: I was written by men.

Good, powerful, strong men, but men nonetheless.

The Merb did not deserve to read me and live.

-

Three.

Blond boy and his fear. His anger. His bitterness.

He is the one blot of normalcy.

He… He… makes me…

Smile.

-

Did I mention I'm evil?

The boy won't come visit me. I'm waiting for him. I'm waiting for recapitulation.

The symphony in my head is being ripped apart and has ground to a screeching halt.

-

Two. The door opens and an arm reaches in. Pulls me out.

From the platform, I swear I can see the Promised Land, but someone's keeping me from crossing that fateful river.

God always was a sucker for irony.

They read the charges.

The machine watches me, six black crystals. I'm a martyr. I'm a goddamn martyr.

I can't do it.

-

_I don't want to die. _

-

Him. A flash of red. Not time yet, still thirty-seconds left, wait, wait—

Too late. His blade inside my body.

And a ripping sensation. His hand, in the small of my back, against my ribs, pain, release, and then:

-

White.

-

I have no regrets, save one, and that is--

-

_Have I not kept this in reserve, and sealed it in my vaults?_


	8. eden

**:eden  
- or, epilogue**

_It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End._

_-_

**:the world**

There is a lovely road that runs out of the city of Atmosia, where the streets are dirty and the people are wan. But the road itself is glowing and sweet, and it leads into the hills, still unspoiled. If you fast-forward the years, the entire terra becomes covered with buildings and smoke and cold, hard roads of asphalt, and it will be a waste.

But for now, all is good.

There is a clearing where a platform once stood, and the indentations of a thousand blood-thirsty humans' footprints still linger; soon, the wind and time will unite to erase them, and they will disappear, as all things must.

But for now, all is good.

And a little beyond the clearing is a tree; no one knows what kind it is, but it's small and a little scrawny and gives no shade. And in half a century, or possibly even a full century, it will grow up and be big and the children of the city will climb it. Go even further and some machine will cut it down and it will be made into a cross, to be hung inside a church, to be prayed to and wept for.

But for now, all is good.

Below the tree is a marker; it is small and flimsy and made of one plank of wood. Someone painted it white, but the paint is flaking, and if you go forward in time, the rain will wash the white paint away, to be taken into the earth so that the grass dies.

But for now, all is good.

There is nothing on that marker, nothing save the white paint and maybe a few ashes. The ashes remain, no matter how hard the wind will blow on it. Below them and the earth is a box; it is not so deep, so that in a million years, when the terra is empty and the great city has decayed, as all cities and faithless ventures do, the sky will deem it necessary for the box to resurface.

But for now, all is good.

She is in the box, she the evil one, she the menace. In the end, she was just a human, always a human, blown out of proportion. Eve has closed her eyes and become what she was always destined to be: dust. Time will never fast-forward for her, never. She is caught here. Maybe that is Hell. It certainly is not heaven.

But for now, all is good.

Somewhere in the Wastelands are the ashes of a book, a spell-book, that belonged once to Death, but now is dead itself. And not far from it is another body, this one finally at peace, and the bones will burn eventually, yet the soul is cool and free at last from running.

And in Eden runs the river of Pison, and at Babel the bricks molder, and that road from Damascus, along which the blind men run, is decaying as I, The World, speak. Goliath is dead; he always was.  
I want you to remember: I will weep, as soon as you turn away, I will cry and bleed and retch onto the ground; my body will sweat and rot, and I am you, don't you understand? The earth claims us all in the end.; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I will scream as I die; I will not go easily; bile, mucus, spit, sweat, blood. I will shudder and disappear, because I will have poisoned myself with myself, at long last, the best returning to the worst, the well deserved end.

…

…

…

But for now, all is good.

-

In the beginning, there was Eden.

-

_Amen._

_--_

* * *

**A/N: **_Yeah. So that's all, folks. Hope you liked it. Now I'm off to finish off the next chapter of Perennial Rose._


End file.
